NOTES ON RURAL TOPICS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2130, 20 December 1894, Page 42

NOTES ON RURAL TOPICS.

I recently had a note on " Pure Miik," and I therein dwelt upon the The Dangers dargera attending the use of of Tuberculous impure milk, and also upon the ' Milk. difficulty of knowing how and where to get the genuine article free from microbes or bacteria. Since writing that note I have como across a Home paper which gives a report of the recent Congress of the Sanitary Institute at Liver, pool. The chairman of the congress, Sir James Orichton Browne, read a paper on •' The Prevention of Tubercular Disease." Sir James is Btronglyof opinion that milk is one of the most frequent means of carrying tubercular infection, and in the course of his address he asked the question, " What muat we do to prevent the dissemination of tubercular disease by milk 7 " He then proceeded to answer that question by fcaying that in the first place it should be made penal to dispose of milk from animals affected by tubercular disease, and next, an efficient inspection of all dairies from which milk is distributed should be insisted upon. He said also thafct.tbere is another and almost infallibl&gfrecaution against tha propagation of tubercule by milk — a precaution that is within the reach of everybody—and that is the boiiing of the milk. Sir James Baid :— " I confess it is to me astonishing that the acknowledged dangers which lurk in milk— dangers not only of a tubercular' nature, but of various kinds— have as yet obtained bo little practical recognition in thlß country, for the pracau'ion of boiling all milk given to infants and children, so as to destroy any bacilli or spores it may contain, i 8 still the exception, and not the rale, in English households. Perhaps the day will come when it will be considered as reprehensible to partake of raw milk, as it is now to partake of raw meat — when, aa the phrase is, the stomach of the country will turn against it ; and lam sure I shall not have appeared in vain on the platform this evening if I can persuade some of you, who are heads of households, to lay it down aB an inexorable rule henceforth that all milk U3efl by your families ahull be belled for five minutes." The commercial letter by the ppecial London correspondent of tho Witness Tho states thattheSeptemberwool Wool Buyers, gales, recently closed when the letter waß written, were diaapnointing to settlers because of the pre« ponderaDoe of faulty and inferior wools offered. Not only.it states, did this wool fetch poor prices itself, but the principal foreign buyers wore co dwatihfied with tha IcLr{,e pron-rti n of poor wool that they left the salcriin disgust, and by thus reducing the demand alco reduced the prices obtained for the superior wool, of which there appears to have bean a fairly laTge quantity. Toe Witness cones toadent makes no comments upon the proceedings of the buyers aa reported by 1 im, but if I may dare to be so bold as to criticise the actions of such an important body of men as. the Loudou _wool buyers* I _would - ear

that they seem to me to have acted in a very absurd manner. I do not pretend to pay who is responsible for a large proportion of the wool offered at those sales being of an inferior description, but it appears that there was a large proportion of such wool, and the buyers must have known that before the sales began, when they did their sampling and valuing Whether they were aware of the character o» the wool or not previous to the sales commencing, why on earth should they fee aggrieved at tbe classification of the lota 1 If they wanted good wool, there was good wool to be offered, and if they wanted to depress the sales by ceasing to bid they could surely do bo without making any ridiculous grievance about all the wool not being up to the standard of their requirements. It would appear as if they looked upon tbe presence of the faulty and inferior wool as a personal affront offered to them, the buyers, by the ignorant and impertinent growers.

Faulty and inferior are general terms, and may mean sandy, dingy, Faulty tender or matted. Sec. Much Wool. °f tne nierino wool from the

high oountry of this colony must be sandy and gritty, and I daresay the same applies to much of the wool from South Africa and South America. Both African and Australian wool ia also often fouled with burrs and Other undesirable vegetable matter, and as for wool being matted or tendor, that, too, i« often beyond tbe power of the flockowners to prevent, as insb-ment weather at a critical period is generally supposed to be the cause of matted and cotted fleeces. This is pure surmise, however, for tbe highest authorities have admitted their inability to account iratisfaciorily for tho matted condition of the fleeces on young and strong sheep. I freely admit that bad management in the matter of over-stocking in the winter is a frequent cause of tbe fleeces being tender and waaty, but as that has always been the case, and probably will continue to be the case, I do not quite understand why the gentlemen who do us the favour of buying our wool should have taken such t flvnee on the particular occasion unde.r notice. As I have Bald, many of tbe causes of inferior wool are beyond the producer's control, and are owing to the character of his country or of his Climate and soil, and if it happened that a lot of this sort of wool got into the September sales it was probably a mere coincidence, and there is no just reason why that fact should have been made a cloak for refririni' g to bid for the numerous lots of good wool to be offered in the bame series.

The frequently-reported slaughtering of cattle by order of the stock Cancer in inspectors for cancer, or Animals. aotinomycosis, as it terme3

in cattle, leads to the conclusion that this dreaded disease is far more Common than was thought to be the case in this description of farm stock, and the thought of eating the meat of a sheep or an ox that may have had some of its internal organs affected by cancer is not a very Comforting one. However, it is comforting to learn that Mr Gilruth, the Government veterinary expert, has not yet found a genuine case of cancer in cattle, although I have seen some specimens of cancerouilooking tumours on liver and lungs that would make one rather afraid of eating the beef of the animal to affected. Mr Gilruth further volunteers the information that there is no authentifiated case of cancer having been contracted by a human being from a domestic animal. " Well, I should say the qupsiion of how cancer is contracted in the first case is involved in too great obscurity to admit of a certain negative reply. It may have been contracted through eating cancerous meat; or through drinking milk or eating butter from an affected beast in hundreds of cases without anyone being able to say how the affection originated. For one thirg, the mpat ot a cancer-stricken animal Is suuposed never to reach the table, but in spite of the vigilance of Government in-Bp<-cti rs many animals whose internal organs are affected will pass into the hands— aye, and stomachs, too — of the consumers.

How it comes about that birds which are considered the farmer's friend A Question in the old country so change of their habits on bt-ii g accliEvoliition. mati6ed in New Zealand is a

* question I must leave the evolutionist* to answer. The sparrow is considered an enemy everywhere. No doubt even the sparrow does a good deal in the way of destroying grubs, but his wonderful feats as a destroyer of grain and the young braird of turnips make him deservedly hated wherever he is found. Tbe preen finch and the linnet are looked upon as the friend of the farmer in the Home country, as they destroy a large number of grnbß while attending their broods, of which they generally raise a couple each season. D iring the rest of the season these birds feed upon the seeds of a variety of weeds, an 3 in some districts the farmers deplore their gradual extinction through the work ot the birdcatchor. In New Zealand the greet, finch ha<3 taken on entirely Dew proclivities, and has proved himself one of the farmer's worst foes, for as soon as tbe youDg grain has formed into the milky state the greenfinches strip the heads of the yonng grain. The New Zealand farmer has ne cause to deplore the scarcity of greenfinches, which continue to increase at an alarming rate in spite of the wholesale barrowing of nests by small boys, and tne yearly holocaust slaughtered by poisoned grain.

• f good oaten chaff would be a better change ot diet. It is not always an economical plan to keep the sheep folded on tbe patch of turnips netted off day and nfgbt. A much more economical plan is to fold them in a dry warm field at night, and give them a liberal allowance of either chaff or bay. Then if folded on the turnips through the day they will thrive much better, and I take it that the farmer's main object is to fatten the sheep off as expeditioufely as possible. There is an allround gain from this system of feeding. It is manifest that the pheep . will eat less turnips daily, and the droppings left in the field will be materially enriched. Of course, in eating off turnip 3 one great consideration is the enriching of the field in which they are folded, aud if the ground is not too damp they may be kept folded in the turnip field over night, and fed wii h chaff or hny as well ; but as quick fattening is the first consideration, a dry camping ground at night is the best. Everyone who ha 9to do with domestic animals ought to know tbat warmth is hnlffeeding; but I fear that point is too often forgotten, as one may sometimes see sheep poaching to the knees in mud amongst turnips, aud kept there over night too, without a dry corner to lie down in. Animals so treated will hardly prove profitable to the farmer.

The present is the season of the year when the good farm wife will have Raising much travail of spirit over Chickens. rearing numerous callow broods. The first trouble is to get a good setting of eggs, for it ought to be the end and aim of every farm wife to •weed out the mongrels from her flocks of bens and ducks and geese and turkeys ; therefore carefully selected eggs should be chosen, haviDg in view the purpose for which tbe chickens are wanted. If to produce laying bens, then some of the approved laying kinds should be selected, bnt if to fatten early for market, quite a different breed will be required. The next trouble is to get a good mother, and for this purpose the old style of mongrel, yclept the barndoor fowl, is as gocd as any. The heavy

The sparrow, the greenfinch, the goldfinch, and the tkylark, all lend their influence to make the life of the New Zealand farmer a burden to him, and he is often at his wit's ends to circumvent them when bia turnips are braiding. The development of unleokedfor appetites has rather upset the calculations of the accUmatisition societies, who find, when it is too late, that the birds imported r o help the farmer have proved enemies of he worst kind. The starling is the only >trd that appears to have maintained its character, and already this bird has done incalculable good in clearing out caterpillars and grasshoppers, both of which proved very destructive before its introduction. Bat even the starling has developed a taste for ripe fruit, and has come to be looked upon as one of the enemies of the horticulturist. The predeliction of insecteating birds for grain developed on their introduction Into this colony probably arises from the absence of the seeds the species feed upon in older lands.

I recently saw a capital article on folding

sheep on turnips in a Home Feeding Sheep paper, the chief points of ou Turnips, which might be instructive to New Zealand farmers. In the article it is pointed out that turnips ontain about 10 per cent of solids and 90 per cent, of water, a proportion which cannot be good for any animal fed exclusively upon turnips, as if often done by our farmers. Gfeen grass will be found to contain about 30 per cent, of solids aud 70 per cent, of water, so that it will Btrike one at once that if fheep are folded on turnips to feed them off the field, the animals ought to get some other food at the same time. Even a little clean straw would be readily eaten by the animals, which will certainly suffer if the weather is cold and damp while kepi to an exclusive diet of turnips. But a proportion

table breeds are rather clumsy, and are not so industrious in fossicking for food for the chicks as those oE a lighter and more acrive kind. Then comes the cLooring of a nest, for the sitting hen does not do well in the fowlhouse amongst the laying hens, which will disturb her, or even get in alongside of her to deposit their eggs, and thus upset all arrangements. For satisfactory chickenrearing a prroperly-conetructed yard with chicken coops ought to be used. Rats are the arch enemy of the farm wife who has numerous broods of chickens, and especially of clucks, and just how to circumvent the rats is one of the many problems to be solved. The very best plan is to lay down an asphalt yard the size desired. For a foundation all that is necessary is to fit rip off the turf from a tquare the size wanted, then to gravel that over lightly with fine gravel, which requires to be firmly rolled into the ground. Tar over the surface so prepared with gas tar, either cold or boiled, and sand over with enough sand to absorb all surplus tar. Afrer this has dried thoroughly, a second coat of tar may be applied in the same way, when the asphalt will be firm enough to be rat proof. Then enclose the square carefully with rat-proof wire netting. The chicken coops erected within an enclosure of this kind will afford a ready meanß of raising young broods in safety. The rough and ready method of allowing the hen to nest wherever fancy directs, aud afterwards allowing the chickens to trail afrer her tbrongb the w«t grass, is not a very satisfactory one. Whether chicks, ducks, geeae, or turkeys are being raised they will get on much better in a proper ohicken yard, divided off to keep the mothers with their broods separate. AGRICOLA 1 The 600 acres of land purchased near Timaru under the Land for Settlements Act is a portion of Mr William Pringle's Rosebrook farm.

rally atovo the rcquirouieuts of the local trade.

Iv thi«, as in every other trade, the main po ; nt is to do the thing we 1, and prime stock only bbould be «mfc, a« the cost would be no more than on inferior, while the pecuniary results and benefit to future trade would be very much g ea'er.

In i onnoutiou with this, the question of shippiug sheep alive is attracting si me attention, and though fche pro'pecfc of tuch a trade tecma at present one of those thiugs to bo ta'.knd of at leismo during this very hot weather, there is no faying what may take place. It seems but yesterday to Borne of us old buffers that the frozen mcit trade was und>r discussion, and I rememl.er tbat when at one of the earlier meetings tlm Hon. Matthew Holmes talked of our sending a million slier p annually from New Zealand ho was almost laughed to scoru even by men who ar<j now amo g those most dee ply inteut 6ted in the frozen meat trade, and who have pusb d the trade ahead with great persaverauce and ability. New Zealand owes her trade in frozen meat largely to the cute-prise of the large shipping companies, who have ete*dily reduced freight change* a>id improved tht-ir maohiuery and steamers in connectiou wilh tliis trade, till tbc latt'&t steamer, the Gothic, teems a vast improvement on even the best of the oloVr s 1 earners. If ever it is found beneficial and practical to carry live Bheepaud cattle to Great Britain the t-aiLC pkill aud entf rpriee on the p-»rb of the great shipping companies in providing suitable and economi. nl steamers for the development of the trade will not be lacking.

The sale <>f fat phe°p at Buroside was again most disappointing, and butchers seemed to have been stocked up at the previous weak's glutted tale. There was smother drop in pric9